Microsoft Officially Backpedals on Xbox One DRM Policies

and doesn't the XBOX One run off of an ATI Archtecture? So why a Gforce card in the Dev Kits?

 

Same here. It clear that is a PC gaming machine.

 

And again, these games BARELY look any better than 360 games.

 

"Do your research."


Idiot.

 

Huh, I guess you weren't around for the E3 where MS showed of 360 games. People were saying the same exact thing back then. And IIRC those games were running on PCs as well.

 

The biggest change will be the complete switch to 1080p (at least there haven't been any 720p games announced afaik), and 60fps should also be far more common. Those two things should make quite a difference. The extra memory should also mean bigger worlds which will be nice coming off the current generation where most titles are completely linear.

 

The XBOX One game that was shown to be running on a PC using nvidia hardware was an isolated incident, from what I remember. Also, it really wouldn't matter much if they used nvidia or AMD hardware in the system, because the differences are minimal in the end. The game is mostly likely programmed in C++ and probably uses a customized DirectX API (much like the XBOX 360 did) running on x86 hardware. With that being said, it's very possible that the game developer was running their game demos on a VM with similar hardware specs to an XBOX one. At that point it doesn't really matter what hardware you are running because the hypervisor simply gives the VM a defined set of resources and the VM isn't aware of anything else. I guess my main point is that the computer the game demo was running on was probably just a machine used for development and nothing more.

One thing I do find interesting, however, is that this upcoming generation of consoles is more PC like than ever before. In the simplest terms possible, they are PCs with unified memory. Considering the similarities in hardware, it should make porting games easier and cheaper than ever. Even going from the XBOX One or PS4 to the PC should be relatively simple because, again, the x86 architecture is at the heart of all three platforms. I think this is exciting and interesting all at the same time.

 

Not VMs, just PCs with some custom drivers or system components.

 

Well I learn something new today. Thank you for taking your time to explain this to me, that was a helpful information. Yes I agreed that newer console are becoming more alike PC and I wouldn't be surprise That PS4 and XBOXone would have mods in games. Like Ureal Tournament 3 that you can import Mod game files from PC to PS3 in official way.

Anyway I give you a 1+rep :encouragement:

Maybe It is still in Work in progress version ? Never less It unlikely I ever get XBOXone anyway because of lacking quality exclusive games (in my opinion) but Ryse Son of Rome is only game I like so far. I rather have a better exclusive library games than high quality graphic though.

 

Im talking about hardware failure. But if you want to talk Mario Kart. I agree Mario kart Wii was a step back from Double Dash. Mario Kart 8 However brings in those gravity karts and that looks like a pretty awesome feature to spice up gameplay...Rereleasing the Exact same Mario kart has never happened before. There's always plenty of changes from the drifting, characters, karts, level design, etc. Meanwhile Sony releases Modnation racing and littlebigplanet racing which the latter sucked ass except for the customization but fanboys will say it's amazing, when in it's core, is a simple Mario kart clone. My friends & cousins come over a lot and we have a blast playing Mario kart for hours, stocked on chips and lager. Nintendo has always been about local multiplayer fun whereas Sony and MS focus on Online MP. Two different worlds that can compliment each other

 

Since they're more like PC's than ever before, I can only imagine how awesome they'd be to Mod. So many possibilities but I wont be modding them until after the new gen is over

 

I assume that porting to xbox is still difficult like it was on the first xbox because MS consoles have very different operating systems and libraries and you lose power from all the encryption code.

 

According to AnandTech, the XBOX One will be running a lightweight version of Hyper-V and will have two virtual machines running on it, one with XBOX OS and the other a Windows kernel. The XBOX OS will handle games and the Windows OS will handle everything else. With this being the case, it seems to me that porting between XBOX and PC should be even easier than ever. It would be even more interesting if someone somehow figured out how to get XBOX OS running on a PC that has Server 2012 and Hyper-V on it and managed to get XBOX One games to run on it

Now, I can't speak to the OS that will be running on the PS4, but one thing is for certain, porting between the PS4 and XBOX One should be much easier than it was with the PS3 and X360. The underlying architecture being nearly identical guarantees that. I seriously doubt we'll see the discrepancies like we saw between some PS3 and X360 games. It was pretty easy on those systems to tell when a game was developed for one platform then ported to the other. Games like BioShock and Oblivion come to mind. I doubt we'll see that this time around.

 

How long has XBOX one been in development? Windows 8 probably wasn't mature when they began making the XBOX One... It doesn't makes sense to to build a new commercial platform based on an unfinished platform.

Can you explain why it seems this will make it easier to port between XBOX & PC?

This scares me. If the underlying architecture is similar between PS4 & XBOX One, and they are both similar to PC, then why bother getting a console (assuming you already have a halfway decent PC)? Devs will still make middleware so they can write code once to deploy on all three platforms, but this will mean they aren't taking full advantage of the unique features of each system. On second thought, though, maybe it is a good thing, because Sony & MS will have to invest in making top notch exclusive games to differentiate themselves.

 

I'm going on the assumption that the XBOX One will use a trimmed down DirectX API, much like the original XBOX and XBOX 360. If so, does it not make sense that porting from one system running DirectX on top of an x86 architecture (XBOX One) to another system running DirectX on top of an x86 architecture (PC) would be relatively straightforward? Also, if XBOX One is running an operating system natively that also runs natively on PC (Hyper-V), does it not make sense then that cross development would/should be made easier? Everything about the XBOX One is PC architecture. The only differentiating factor is that XBOX One has its XBOX OS, which I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts could easily be made to run on any PC running Hyper-V (or maybe just any PC in general).

For me personally, I have a high end gaming PC, and I plan on purchasing both next gen consoles. I game mostly on PC these days, but I want the consoles for their exclusive titles. The reason I find this so exciting is that perhaps it means more games will be ported to PC than previously were.

Your point on middleware is a good one. Over and over I hear people say that the main advantage of coding a console game is that the platform is fixed, which allows developers to program directly to metal. But does anyone actually do that? I would be interested to find out. But thinking about middleware, if the architectures are so similar, does it not make sense that the middleware can be smaller, lighter, and more efficient? Imagine how much of a nightmare is must have been to write something that could transition among Intel x86 (PC), IBM PowerPC (X360), and IBM Cell (PS3)? Granted the Cell was very much based in PowerPC, it was still a much different processor than the one in the X360. With all three major platforms now being powered by x86, it should make the middleware much more efficient and thus the porting process easier, or so I think. I could be way off though, it would be the first time

 

Glad to hear that they have backed down on the DRM stuff

 

All 3 platforms? The Wii U isn't x86-based. I don't think they've officially stated what processor it uses, but it's probably POWER-based.

 

When I said all three platforms, I meant PC, PS4, and XBOX One (which is what my entire first two paragraphs above that sentence were about). I consider the PC a major platform because it's my main platform, so I made that statement from my point of view. I'm certainly not trying to explicitly or implicitly knock the Wii-U. Its place in this upcoming console generation is a discussion for a different thread